Kutcher-starring 'Jobs' film delayed as competition mounts

Could Steve Jobs be in the running for an Oscar? That seems to be the impetus behind Open Road Films's delay of Jobs, its Ashton Kutcher-led film originally scheduled to hit US cinemas on 19 April — the 37th anniversary of the founding of Apple.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio wants more time to market the film (which has been rebranded from its oddly capitalised jOBS title), and does not yet have a new release date.

The biopic, which began shooting last summer, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, chronicling Jobs's rise from college dropout to exalted entrepreneur and household name. Josh Gad, of Broadway's Book of Mormon and NBC's 1600 Penn fame, joins Kutcher as creative partner and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak; Dermot Mulroney, James Woods, Matthew Modine, and J.K. Simmons also star.

Five Star Feature Films released the first clip of the movie in January; watch the video above.

The film's delay may push it into heavy competition with the Aaron Sorkin-penned movie based on Walter Isaacson's biography, Steve Jobs. No release date has been set yet for that one.

And as if dueling big-screen memoirs weren't enough, comedy site Funny or Die is planning its own take on Jobs, The New York Times reported. Titled iSteve, the video will debut online 15 April, starring Justin Long as the late CEO. Boasting a 60- to 75-minute run time, the film will be the longest that the micro-video site has produced, but the feature-length time won't put a dampener on the video's core purpose: comedy.

"In true Internet fashion, it's not based on very thorough research — essentially a cursory look at the Steve Jobs Wikipedia page," writer and director Ryan Perez told the Times.

The biopic's 81-page script, which pokes fun at biopics, was built from the initial idea of creating a fake Steve Jobs movie trailer, iSteve producer Allison Hord told the Times, adding that the joke simply escalated into a long-form video that includes James Urbaniak and Michaela Watkins as Bill and Melinda Gates, as well as Lost's Jorge Garcia as Steve Wozniak.

"We might not be the best, but we will be the first," Perez said in a jibe toward Jobs's change in schedule.